Students returning to classes this fall in the Ozarks town of Cassville, Missouri, may be on better behavior than usual. That’s because the local school board has reinstated corporal punishment, otherwise known as paddling, for disciplining poor conduct.
The spanking policy isn’t quite like the old days of classroom law and order. Parents and guardians must give signed consent to let their children be subject to a swing of the paddle “when other means of discipline have failed,” including detention and suspension. And they can opt out at any time, no matter what their child has done to warrant a body check.
Cassville will also keep the whacks out of view of other children and include a second adult staffer as a witness. Face or head hitting is not allowed, and no word on whether a video record will be kept. Individual principals have discretion over when and to whom the buttocks penalty option should be enforced. The board’s policy manual states, “A staff member may use reasonable physical force against a student for the protection of the student or other persons or to protect property. Restraint of students in accordance with the district’s policy on student seclusion and restraint is not a violation of this policy.”
The directive has naturally sparked a wave of social media outrage, along with protests from some educators, including one who called corporal treatment a “wildly inappropriate, ineffective practice.” However, the superintendent of Cassville’s 1,900-student district said the move to unspare the rod was made in response to concerns voiced by parents, employees, and students who say in-school misconduct has gotten out of control.
Missouri is one of 19 (mostly Southern) states allowing physical discipline of students, which is supported by a 1977 Supreme Court ruling (Ingraham v. Wright) that says school spanking does not violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, as long as it is not “unreasonable” or “excessive.” From the most recent federal data available, some 4,000 schools nationally reported using some form of corporal punishment.
I vividly remember and feel the sting of my own paddling in 1962 at the stern hands of my grade school principal, Miss McDonald. Orders had gone out for students not to walk across the ballfield following a heavy snowstorm, perhaps for fear that some kindergartner would disappear in a drift. A couple of second graders and I were outed for defying the ban — how could we not! We were paraded in front of our class and instructed to bend over, which wiped any lingering snickers from all of our faces. I can still hear the bun-haired Miss M. taking a deep, nasal wind-up breath just before thwacking my backside twice with her board, which she gripped as tightly as a Federer forehand. Her paddle had a leather wrist strap, a sign of how often it was used.
Some prominent medical and behavioral groups, including the American Psychological Association, have long opposed school spankings, arguing that aside from posing injury risks, such punishments have disproportionately been meted out to minority children. There’s also concern that striking children, even in a controlled fashion, triggers more defiance and aggression, which is why many professionals endorse positive reinforcement to modify unruly students.
But as long as it is deployed fairly and with restraint, the mere threat of ritualized paddling could check disruptive students who won’t respond to other types of direction. If anything, I think Cassville is making a mistake in removing its punishment from the classroom. While I never felt remorse or guilt for trespassing the snowy field, as I might have for cheating or name-calling, I experienced extreme humiliation by being flogged in front of my friends and classmates, a hurt far greater than the paddle itself. By sequestering the actors in any spanking scenario, Cassville loses the powerful effect of public, peer shaming that may be the true deterrence to future misconduct, or at least rule-breaking.
I may have scored some bravery points with my pals that long-ago day. And I continued to instigate my share of mischief, sometimes to the edge of school decorum. But the fear of reprising the red-faced embarrassment of an all-out paddling show was more than enough to keep me from going rogue. Hopefully, it will keep some of the doofuses of Cassville from doing the same, even if they take their licks in private.
Allan Ripp runs a press relations firm in New York.
